These supermarket favourites have got smaller (Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
If you’ve had the feeling your supermarket favourites have been getting smaller, you’re not wrong.
‘Shrinkflation’ and ‘skimpflation’ has been rife recently as products are getting smaller, but prices are staying the same – and consumer group Which? says it’s time for retailers to be more honest about it.
Which? has revealed it was inundated when it asked shoppers for examples of products that were smaller or had fewer key ingredients.
With customers now paying more for less – and at a time when food inflation has soared – the group has named some key culprits to look out for.
Kettle Chips Sea Salt and Crushed Black Peppercorns Crisps shrank from 150g to 130g at Tesco, while Yeo Valley Organic Salted Spreadable went from 500g to 400g at Sainsbury’s and Tesco.
Even your humble cuppa isn’t safe as PG Tips Tasty Decaf Pyramid tea bags went from containing 180 bags to 140 at a number of supermarkets.
Listerine Fresh Burst mouthwash also shrank from 600ml to 500ml and even went up by 52p at Tesco. This meant that shoppers paid 21% more for 17% less.
Have you noticed things getting smaller? (Picture: Getty)
What’s more, brands are also now altering recipes to include fewer expensive ingredients – and Which? has named a few products where this can be seen.
It says in the Sainsbury’s Clotted Cream Rice Pudding, the clotted cream has been replaced with whipping cream in its entirety and has since been repackaged.
Meanwhile the Morrisons 150g guacamole lost some avocado, going from 80% of its recipe to 77%. This is also the case in 1.5kg Tesco Beef Lasagne, which has seen the amount of beef drop from 23% to 19%.
Cutbacks are also apparent in Waitrose’s Butter Chicken Curry, where chicken content has dropped from 47% to 41%.
‘Fhrinkflation’ and ‘skimpflation’ spots, according to Which?
Shrinkflation:
Andrex Classic Clean Flushable Washlets Moist Toilet Tissue Wipes – from 40 to 36 in a pack at Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco
Bisto Best Chicken Gravy Granules – from 250g to 230g at Asda and Morrisons
Cadbury’s Brunch Chocolate Chip Bars – from six to five in a pack at Asda, Morrisons, Ocado and Tesco
Coffee Mate Original Whitener – from 500g to 450g at Tesco
Colgate Triple Action Toothpaste – from 100ml to 75ml at Aldi, Asda, Lidl, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco
Kettle Chips Sea Salt and Crushed Black Peppercorns Crisps – from 150g to 130g at Tesco
Lurpak Slightly Salted Butter – from 225g to 180g at Morrisons and Sainsbury’s
McVitie’s Digestives Dark Chocolate Biscuits – from 433g to 400g at Morrisons and Tesco
Yeo Valley Organic Salted Spreadable – from 500g to 400g at Sainsbury’s and Tesco
Skimpflation:
Morrisons Guacamole (150g) – from 80% avocado to 77%
Morrisons The Best Lasagne Al Forno (400g) – from 30% beef to 26%
Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Lasagne Ready Meal (400g) – from 28% beef to 26%
Tesco Beef Lasagne (1.5kg) – from 23% beef to 19%
Tesco Tex Mex Chicken Enchiladas (480g) – from 27% chicken to 20%
Waitrose Butter Chicken Curry – from 47% chicken to 41%
Yeo Valley Spreadable Butter – from 54% butter to 50%
Which? is now calling for supermarkets to be more upfront and open about these changes – which are sneaky but not illegal.
Retail editor for Which? Ele Clark said: ‘Supermarkets and manufacturers must be more upfront by making sure changes to popular products are clear, and by ensuring that unit pricing is prominent, legible and consistent in-store and online so that shoppers can easily compare prices across different brands and pack sizes.’
When approached by Which? the majority of manufacturers said that the changes often reflected their own costs or helped to keep products more affordable for consumers.
What have supermarkets and brands said?
A spokesperson for Arla, which makes Lurpak, said average prices had reduced proportionately: ‘Our research showed that the new pack sizes and price points were the most appealing to a greater proportion of shoppers.’
Nestle, which makes Coffee Mate, said: ‘In order to maintain the highest standards of quality, it is sometimes necessary to make minor adjustments to the weights of our products.’
PG Tips manufacturer Lipton Teas said the average price of a PG Tips decaf tea bag fell 10% between January 2021 and January 2022.
A Yeo Valley spokesperson said its new recipe was tested with consumers, adding that technological advances had made it possible to reduce butter and fat without compromising on taste or quality.
Waitrose said: ‘Our focus is always on our customers and our new curry recipes performed better than the previous range in benchmarking tests. We’ve kept the same prices since this change and we continue to use industry-leading higher-welfare chicken from British farms across our entire ready meals range.’
A Tesco spokesman said: ‘Changes to products are often to make them tastier or healthier. In the case of our Finest sausages, we updated the recipe in 2021 to deliver a healthier and better tasting product.’
Premier Foods said: ‘We changed the size of our Bisto Best product back in the summer of 2022, when the food industry was experiencing enormous increases in input costs, to ensure we could offer the same quality at a price which remained affordable. The good news is that the worst cost pressures are past us and the average price for Bisto is on its way down.’
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These are the customer favourites that have been getting smaller.